Kensi wants to keep Christ in Christmas...

But Santa scares the crap out of her.

As we prepared to get Kensington to sleep, tonight we needed to up the ante.

You see, for the past several months, Kensi would - from time to time - get out of her bed and crawl herself onto ours. And leading up to that moment, there would be 4-5 times within the first two hour of us putting her down that she would come up with endless excuses to get out of bed.  

“I need to go potty,” (This one always works, and she knows it… we don’t need her having an accident in her sleep);

“I’m thirsty,” (Two sips of water and then its back in the bedroom);

“I’m hungry,” (This one doesn’t work and I’m not sure why it’s still in her rotation);

“There’s a noise outside,” (We make sure the ipod is playing in the room so this is a non-issue);

 "I'm scared of the dark,” (Don’t start with me… you have three. Not one, not two, but THREE nightlights on in your room. Wait. This might actually be why she can’t sleep. No worries, she has a sleep mask that she got for Christmas last year);

“There’s a monster under my bed,” (Yes, and we put him there to make sure you stay IN your bed. You get out again and we’re going to tell him he can bite your feet the moment they touch the floor again).

Okay, the last one is a stretch. We wouldn’t want him to bite her feet… maybe just gnaw on a toe or two until she realizes that we mean business.

Tonight, we couldn’t take ANY chances. Santa was coming and needed to assemble all of her toys so they would be ready for her to play with in the morning.

After Kensi placed Santa’s magic key on our doorknob (now that we don’t have a chimney for him to crawl down in, he needs some way to get into the house), we tell her that Santa will come in, but if he sees her or even thinks that she’s still up, he will leave and take all of the toys with him.

She runs down the hall into her bedroom and hops into her bedroom. As I start to read a book to her (‘Twas the night before Christmas), Chris places our wireless speakers outside of her bedroom window. Half way through the book, Chris enters her room with his iPhone hidden behind his back. Mid sentence, he presses play and outside, you can hear the bells on Santa’s reindeer. Deadpanned face, Kensi looks at me and says, “You’re done reading for the night. We can finish this tomorrow. I gotta go to sleep. Now,” and gives me a peck on the cheek. Looking at Chris, as serious as can be, she says, “Dad, no cuddles tonight, only kisses. Do you understand?”

“Kensi, what’s wrong?”

“I can hear Santa’s sleigh. I have to get to sleep so I get presents.”

Our master plan had worked. We wait 20 minutes to start our evening’s activities, waiting until we knew she was out. At minute 21, Chris walks into her room to check on her and she peeks her head out from underneath the blanket. “Daddy, I’m scared.”

“Baby, what’s wrong? Why are your scared?”

“I’m so excited I can’t get to sleep. Feel my heart beating, daddy, its going fast. I can’t wait until Christmas but I don’t want Santa to know that I’m still up so I’m scared he’ll find out. Don’t tell him, okay? Promise?”

“Yes, baby… I promise I won’t tell Santa that you’re still up [cue music] but you really need to go to sleep. He’s almost here”

Ten minutes later, she was out like a light.

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This year, Kensi had asked Santa for only three things. We told her that she’s very fortunate and couldn’t go to him with her initial list that consisted of everything she’s seen on a TV commercial . Since September, every toy, movie, character and set of Ginsu knives she’s seen on the screen, her response was, “I want that. Can you buy me that? Can Santa bring me that?”

We’ve had to sit her down and let her know that there are other little boys and girls that don’t have the things that she has, and Santa not only needs to make sure there are enough toys for everyone on his list, it’s also our duty to make sure that we buy some items and help Santa deliver them to other children that are in need. It took a couple times saying this, but she understood. We went out and got the toy catalogs from the major stores (These are NOTHING like it was in my day… I remember they were as thick as the Sears catalog, or the size of a phone book. Now they are a couple pages, like a Sunday paper advertisement, as most everything is now online.

She looked through the flyers with a marker and narrowed her ask down to three; A pink microphone with a stand, makeup, and the latest LaLaLoopsie doll with blue hair that she can comb (the other LaLaLoopsie dolls all have hard plastic hair)

When she finally had the chance to sit on Santa’s lap, she forgot the name of the doll. She was a little stumped as she wanted to make sure she got a specific as possible so he would know which one to bring her. Heck, if he’s only brining three things, they BETTER be the ones she wants.  And that’s the holiday photo that we went with.